Help Nexus 5 tethering

[Joe33426]

Hi-

I just ordered a Nexus 5 and I'm pretty excited. I've been waiting for my contract to be up at Verizon and I'm going to switch my family plan to T-mobile.

It's been a long time since I had an Android phone, so I'm wondering if I'm going to have to root my Nexus 5 to enable tethering on T-mobile or does this come enabled on the phone?

Thanks for any guidance!

Joe

 

[ritchea]

It's enabled on stock.

 

[Joe33426]

It's enabled on stock.

Thanks! That's awesome! Good to go out of the box.

I'm new to t-mobile, so I'm wondering if anyone knows if they allow tethering or if it's against the ToS.

 

[OhSeven]

Thanks! That's awesome! Good to go out of the box.

I'm new to t-mobile, so I'm wondering if anyone knows if they allow tethering or if it's against the ToS.

If you try using a computer on the connection, you will be redirected to the TMo website asking you to upgrade. You used to be able to use a browser extension to spoof your useragent string which would sneak past their detection, but I don't know if it still works

 

[Rxpert83]

Depends on your plan.

T-mobiles unlimited 4G plan includes 2.5 GB of tethering

 

[OhSeven]

Depends on your plan.

T-mobiles unlimited 4G plan includes 2.5 GB of tethering

Interesting, I didn't realize that! No tethering on the $30 plan at least

 

[akmsr]

Interesting, I didn't realize that! No tethering on the $30 plan at least

100 MB allowed

 

[Rxpert83]

100 MB allowed

You sure that's true on the prepaid plan?

 

[OhSeven]

I was just testing it out and even with a user agent switcher, I was only getting access to the T-mobile website, not even the upsell page. A quick google search led me to a reddit post linking to this fix on xda. I haven't tried it yet because it requires root

I have the T-mobile $30 unlimited prepaid plan and I ran into the tethering block after getting my Nexus 5.

I was able to work around the issue by modifying the following sqlite database (you'll need root):
/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db

You need to add a new entry to the global table called "tether_dun_required" with a value of 0.

It looks like you need to do this because some configuration data was added to Android for T-mobile that forwards tethered data to this APN: pcweb.tmobile.com
T-mobile is probably checking to see if your account has tethering enabled when you go through this APN.

After I made this change I also needed to change my APN settings so that it uses ipv4 instead of ipv6. It seems like tethering with ipv6 does not work 100% yet.

I hope this helps.

Nexus 5 tethering block? - Page 7 - xda-developers

 

[akmsr]

You sure that's true on the prepaid plan?

as of a month ago people of xda forums who has 30$ 5GB LTE pre paid plan said they have it. you have to download the t-mobile app (the spyware ) and it tells you that you have 100 MB tethering left. this was activated when t-mobile allowed 2.5 GB for unlimited plans but never mentioned for 30$ plan. someone stumbled onto it and was using it. free tethering cut off after 100 MB and the user promptly applied the settings.db hack linked by ohSeven bellow to regain tethering. i have seen the screenshots.

I was just testing it out and even with a user agent switcher, I was only getting access to the T-mobile website, not even the upsell page. A quick google search led me to a reddit post linking to this fix on xda. I haven't tried it yet because it requires root



Nexus 5 tethering block? - Page 7 - xda-developers

this fix is mainly for kitkat. google introduced the idea of tagging tethered data with a flag for the telecoms. since day one t-mobile is using it. later att and sprint started too. data gets sent through a webpage called pcweb (in t-mobiles case) and checked for the flag. if the plan allows for tether everything is ok. otherwise you get sent to a upsale page.
the setting that gets changed is tether_dun_required = 0 (from default 1 ). there are ways to implement the fix without rooting by adb shell command so rooting is optional. but then you have to use the user agent switcher in browser.